Collegium Budapest – an Institute for Advanced Study and a Centre of Excellence. Collegium Budapest has been operating for 12 years now. The purpose of Collegium Budapest is to promote culture and the sciences by giving internationally recognized academics and young researchers an opportunity to pursue research of their choice in an international, intellectually stimulating environment. Following the model of the pioneering Princeton Institute for Advanced Study, the Wissenschaftskolleg in Berlin and other similar institutions, Collegium Budapest is the first IAS-type institute in the post-communist region. By inviting outstanding Western and Eastern scholars to Budapest and offering them a common temporary workplace in the intimate medieval Castle district, the institute strove to rebuild – after 50-year-long isolation – the international contacts of scholars and academic institutions in the CEE region. In the course of these 12 years, Collegium Budapest has emerged as a major international academic centre and a model for new forms of academic co-operation.